jeff zucker
Big Screen
The Peter Chernin-Comcast Conspiracy Is Revealed
5:33AM Richard Rushfield | For the past few months Hollywood’s favourite two guessing games have been: Who’s going to take over NBC/Universal and what’s going to happen to ex-Fox chief Peter Chernin? Well, yesterday the two games collided in a paradigm-exploding pile-up. More »
Big Screen
Tom Ford Is Toronto Festival’s Man Of Destiny
1:14AM Richard Rushfield | It’s 90s-a-go-go all over entertainment. Harvey Weinstein’s pacing a festival screening lobby , Rupert Murdoch’s got it all figured out, and Jay Leno is still the King just like the olden times. It’s all in the trades. More »
Small Screen
How Jay Leno Screwed Conan O’Brien
6:41PM the cajun boy | The New York Times has a massive piece in this week’s Sunday Magazine by Lynn Hirschberg on Conan O’Brien and the changes taking place at NBC as O’Brien prepares to take over as host of the Tonight Show on June 1, while Leno moves into the nightly 10pm slot. More »
Jay Leno Reveals That NBC Chief Jeff Zucker Is Utterly Clueless
2:00AM Kyle Buchanan | Hey, you there! Think you can run a network? You may be able to do it better than NBC’s boy-king Jeff Zucker, who Jay Leno has just exposed as a total space cadet. More »
Tina Fey Breaks Campaign Promise, Forced to Play Sarah Palin Once More
3:15AM Kyle Buchanan | Remember this lady, Sarah Palin? She was famous for appearing every Saturday night on the tee-vee, saying cute things about Russia, gays, and Katie Couric. Or maybe that was her portrayer, Tina Fey? More »
Les Moonves Confident ‘CSI’ Will Crush Leno: ‘By A Lot’
3:32AM Seth | As Jeff Zucker foists his last hopes for NBC on Jay Leno and his arsenal of funny little newspaper-clipping typos, his arch nemesis—future galactic despot Les Moonves—couldn’t help but hijack the opportunity to engage in a favourite pastime: an old-fashioned, TV honcho dick-measuring contest! Talking today at the same New York media conference where Zucker dropped jaws by announcing his plan to scale back on programming hours, Moonves temporarily blinded the audience with a smile, before pledging that it wouldn’t be long before David Caruso would be scraping Leno off the bottom of his Italian loafers. THR reports: More »
Conan On Leno: ‘Temperatures Rising Rapidly In My Personal Hell’
1:45AM Seth | All eyes were on Conan O’Brien last night in anticipation of what, if anything, he’d say about NBC’s surprise announcement that Jay Leno would upstage his long-planned ascension to The Tonight Show throne. (With a half-hour of local news between the two as the delicious, late night sandwich filling.) While he never said the words “Jay Leno can suck my pink, Irish ass” directly, he did point to the worrisome 20 degree temperature-increase in NYC that accompanied the news. The subtext was clear: Conan had been following our Pop Culture Doomsday coverage closely, and was warning his viewers to find their quickest route into orbit before the planet erupts into flames the second Leno delivers his first joke about Bill Clinton getting handsy with Michelle Obama at the Press Corps dinner in primetime. [Late Show] More »
Jeff Zucker Sends Out ‘You’re Fired Unless Your Name Is Ben Silverman’ All-Staff NBC Memo
9:45AM Seth | “‘They call her the black widow. Every program she touches turns to death,’ growled our source. ‘She is on very thin ice.’” That was how Page Six described Universal Media Studio President Katherine Pope (pictured) last month in a suspiciously positioned item foisting blame for the network’s disastrous string of recent offerings—shows like Bionic Woman, My Own Worst Enemy, Lipstick Librarians, and freshly squeezed lemon Knight Rider—on her fetchingly exposed shoulders. Nikki Finke accuses Silverman of having leaked the items himself (”that’s one of the fringe benefits of his selling his Reveille to Elisabeth Murdoch and yachting with her this summer”) in her analysis of today’s shakeup that saw not just Pope’s exit, but that of NBC Entertainment EVP Teri Weinberg, as well. (Weinberg was the D-girl Silverman brought over from Reveille who was later discovered in the compromising position technically referred to in the business as shtupping your showrunner. Because no one ever fucks anyone they work with in Hollywood—ever.) More »
Helen Mirren, Nazi Huntress
3:40AM STV | Helen Mirren will trade in her two-piece for a gun in The Debt, a remake of an Israeli hit about a Mossad agent who comes out of retirement to track down a war criminal. [Variety] TNT fell for the old “Buy a Bruckheimer, Get a Wahlberg For Free” trick, not realizing it negotiated for Donnie’s new Boston cop procedural Bunker Hill. Gotta read those contracts, gang. [THR] More »
